Publication: 28th April 2026 – Quercus Books
LAURA NEVER MEANT TO LIE. BUT OLD HABITS DIE HARD.
When Annie Adams heads to London to visit her mother, Laura, the last thing she expects to find is a dead body. Least of all for it to be Fliss, the budding artist Laura had just taken under her wing.
Annie is no stranger to murder – after all, she’s solved a few cases already. And something about the way Fliss died feels familiar. She’s seen a case like this before. Or read about it, rather, in the journals of her dead Great Aunt Frances, whose close friend was killed in the 1960s in the exact same way: with her heart surgically removed from her chest.
As threats pile up on Laura’s doorstep, it soon becomes clear that she’s next, and that she’s hiding something . . . With her mother’s life on the line, can Annie find the killer before it’s too late?
From the gritty streets of 1960s Soho to the lofty galleries of present-day West London, follow Annie and Frances as they race to bring a killer to justice.
This third book in the Castle Knoll Files series is my favourite so far and I read it in one sitting, late into the night, unable to go to sleep until I reached the end.
As in the previous books, How to Cheat Your Own Death is also narrated in a dual timeline. In the 1960s, Frances Adams has arrived in London ready to start a new life and go to university where she meets the glamorous socialite Vera Huntington. Between clubs in Soho, art galleries, and beautiful clothes, Frances knows there is something quite mysterious about Vera that is confirmed when she is found murdered. In the present day, her great-niece Annie is in London to visit her mother Laura, a famous artist, whose new protegée has been worrying Annie. And when she finds her murdered in an alley, her heart removed, Annie knows that she must solve the case before her mother gets involved. However, her mother is clearly keeping secrets, her estranged father wants to reconnect, although his motives are far from fatherly, and the murder vividly reminds Annie of another murder in the 1960s she’s read about in one of Frances’ diaries. Luckily, Detective Crane is in town to help her, but he has his own motives and secrets to face.
How to Cheat Your Own Death kept me engrossed from the first to the last page. The atmospheric setting of London in the 1960s, two complex and intense mysteries that blend together, the very slow burn romance between Anne and Detective Crane that hopefully will see more action in the next book, and a prophecy that keeps the two protagonists on their toes. I am so looking forward to the next book!
A huge thank you to Quercus and NetGalley for providing me with a proof of this gripping novel.
Kristen Perrin is originally from Seattle, Washington, where she spent several years working as a bookseller before moving to the UK to do a master’s and a PhD. She lives with her family in Surrey, where she can be found poking around vintage bookstores, stomping in the mud with her two kids, and collecting too many plants. How To Solve Your Own Murder is her debut adult novel.
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